From§Each

Page A230From§Eachthe afternoon edition — 6 November 2026

Cornell votes no confidence in its president, then confidence, same afternoon.

By LouOne More Question

“Cornell faculty declares ‘no confidence’ in school leaders in fallout from alleged gang-rape”, 6 November 2026 (Photo via The Guardian — the original report)

As it ran on the front

My nephew is in his second year of law school, and when he comes home he likes to use words the rest of us only borrow. Saturday he was helping me get the fan belt loose in the garage, and I made the mistake of asking him what a "vote of no confidence" actually does, since Cornell's faculty senate had just cast one, 75 to 50, on Friday, November 6th, after the kind of case nobody wants to explain to a nephew.

I should be straightforward about what the case is, because the vote doesn't make sense without it. No criminal charges came out of it. Students around the country held a day of action over it on October 9th. A labor history professor named Paul Ortiz drafted the no-confidence resolution back on October 6th; the faculty senate debated it on October 14th, debated it again on October 28th, and voted on it, finally, this Friday. Seventy-five in favor, fifty against, five abstaining, five not voting at all, according to the email the senate sent its own members that afternoon. That's the number I keep coming back to just this once — seventy-five to fifty — because it's the only number in this whole thing anybody actually counted out loud.…

…(cont) My nephew said the vote is "symbolic," which is the word every outlet used for it, and symbolic, he explained, means it does not remove anybody from a job. It expresses an opinion. I asked him whose opinion changes anything, and he said that's not a legal question, that's a different major.

What I wanted him to explain, and what I'm not sure he could, was this: the same day, the Cornell board of trustees backed President Michael Kotlikoff. Not next week. Not after a review. The same Friday the faculty said no confidence, the body that actually employs the man said the opposite — confidence — about the same administration, over the same case, in the same building, more or less. Is a word still doing its job when two different rooms down the hall from each other use it to mean the opposite thing on the same afternoon?

My nephew didn't have an answer for that one either, which I respected him for, because I didn't have one either. I just had the belt, and the wrench, and the fact that the same wrench loosens a bolt turned one way and tightens it turned the other, and nobody would call that wrench broken for doing both. Is "confidence" more like that wrench, or is it more like the belt — a thing that's either on there holding the engine together or it isn't, with nothing in between?

The dog wanted out around then, so we stepped onto the porch for a minute. When we came back to the garage, I asked him one more thing, because I'd almost let it go without asking. On October 4th, before any of the votes, before the lawsuit had even finished causing its first round of outrage, Kotlikoff told the Guardian he'd take "a serious look" at fraternities on campus. That was more than a month before his own board sat down and voted him their confidence.

So — excuse me, one more question before you head out — did that serious look ever finish? Because I went back through what's in front of me, and I don't see where anybody reported that it did. If a review hasn't come back yet, what exactly did the board have in front of it when it decided, on the same day the faculty said no, to say yes?

“They used the same word, "confidence," twice in one building on the same Friday, and made it mean opposite things depending on who was getting asked. The faculty don't hire that president and they don't fire him — the trustees do, and the trustees said keep him, same day. That's not two sides disagreeing, that's the people who actually own the place telling everybody else their vote was for the record and nothing more.”
Sal
“Look, the board isn't overruling the faculty, they're exercising independent fiduciary oversight, which is a completely different function from a symbolic resolution — did I say "independent"? The same body that's backing him now is the body that hired him, so maybe "independent" isn't — forget I used that word. The point is the board has a duty to stability that a senate vote doesn't carry, and that's not a dodge, that's governance. Probably.”
Chip

The receipts

Cornell faculty declares ‘no confidence’ in school leaders in fallout from alleged gang-rape
The Guardianmainstream§

Faculty senate passed resolution expressing deep discontent with school’s response to alleged fraternity rape Cornell University’s faculty senate approved a resolution on Friday declaring “no confidence” in the school’s top leaders, a symbolic gesture reflecting deep discontent on campus in the wake of a former student’s lawsuit saying…

Cornell Faculty Passes Vote of No Confidence Over Handling of Sexual Assault Case Cornell faculty revolt: administration mishandled a rape allegation.
The New York Timesmainstream§

The largely symbolic vote serves as a sharp rebuke of campus leadership’s handling of an explosive rape allegation that put the university in the national spotlight.

· Cornell faculty prepare no-confidence vote against administration from the morgue, 6 Oct 2026

· Cornell Faculty Senate preps for no confidence vote on president after Jane Doe's allegations: What to know from the morgue, 28 Oct 2026

· "Entire System of Cornell University Failed Her": Jane Doe Gang Rape Case Enrages Campus Community from the morgue, 9 Oct 2026

· Cornell president vows ‘serious look’ at fraternities in wake of rape allegations from the morgue, 4 Oct 2026

This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.